Pouncing Dragon, Hidden Tiger

IMAGINE a commonwealth with five per cent of China8217;s population and 2.5 per cent of India8217;s. Again, imagine the China part to be worth more than 1.5 trillion, in other words, the third largest economy in the world after the US and Japan. The India part is worth several billion dollars. Given that most members of this commonwealth are either top notch business executives from Ivy league North American universities or outstandingly successful professionals, the per capita income of this commonwealth is one of the highest in the world. The average intelligence quotient of its kids too is the highest in the world as are the education levels of their parents, quite a number of them doctorates. Sounds too good to be true. Not really. It is neither an imagined new superpower, nor an El Dorado. This is the true story of the two largest diasporas in the world, the Overseas Chinese and the People of Indian Origin PIO.

Move over, Jewish diaspora, it is the century for Asian enterprise. Both the diasporas began more than a century ago when the respective mother countries were colonies. The genesis is not as pathetic as slave trade, but almost as pitiable: indentured labourers commonly referred to as 8216;coolies8217; or 8216;Jehazi bhais8217;, brought to work in inhuman conditions in railroad projects and unsafe mines in North America and other parts of the world.

All of them were males who could bring neither their spouses, nor marry local women, given widely prevalent miscegenation laws in several states of the US. They could not own property, and in several instances were either killed in racial riots or faced other abuses. Yet they survived, given their immense grit and determination, and prospered even in their China Town and Little India ghettos.

Today, the two are not only vast global networks of plenty and prosperity, but potentially and in one case truly the fastest engine of growth for their mother countries. Sad then that the similarity between the two diasporas, however, ends there.

The fact is that OCs and PIOs are different in important respects. Most significantly, in their relationship with their motherlands. While the overseas Chinese have contributed enormously to their mother country, the PIO have relatively lagged behind.

According to the latest estimates by economists Ashok Guha and Amit Ray, while 80 per cent of the Foreign Direct Investment FDI entering China is from the Overseas Chinese community, the PIO8217;s share of the total FDI entering India has never crossed 35 per cent. Even that was during the best years in the mid-90s, and since then it has hovered around 20 to 25 per cent.

In other words, despite the hype and the hoopla, the Indian diaspora has done very little for India, compared to what the Chinese diaspora has done for mainland China. Why? There are at least five reasons. First, unlike the Overseas Chinese who are primarily merchants, bankers and large business behemoths, Indians are largely professionals, like doctors and techies. It is the 8216;twice migrant8217; Gujarati and Punjabi community from Kenya and Uganda, who have very little to do with India, who have real overseas business experience. In a nutshell, Overseas Chinese have simply more money to invest in the homeland or in the host country compared to Indians living abroad. Second, China opened up its economy to outside investment in 1978 whereas India did so in 1991. Therefore, China ended up with a one-and-a-half decade headstart.

Third, Guha and Ray demonstrate that a large proportion of the expatriate-led FDI in China is a result of the Overseas Chinese businessmen pushing investments from Hong Kong, Taiwan and even Singapore. India simply does not have such an advantage.

Fourth, while the Overseas Chinese are a more homogeneous lot, predominantly Han Chinese with a common bond of Confucianism and the Chinese script, the Indians are divided into hundreds of communities in terms of language, religion, region and caste. So you have the Gujaratis, the Punjabis, the Tamils, the Bengalis, the Sikhs, the Hindus, and so on and so forth, in Fiji, in the US, in Britain and in the world over, a queer case of trans-nationalism as well as sub-nationalism.

But the most important reason is how the mother country treats its diaspora. Notwithstanding the euphoria generated by the Bharatiya Pravasi Divas, the truth is that the Indian government has done precious little for its diaspora compared to what the Chinese state has done for its overseas community.

Consider some of the facts: While the Chinese Communist state set up an Overseas Ministry in 1950 right after independence, the Indian government has not bothered to do so even 56 years after independence. There are two reasons: first, it is a simple case of lack of vision and will power on the part of the Indian politicians. Second, 8216;8216;there is a unique attitude of bloody-mindedness that the Indian state has towards Indians settled abroad,8217;8217; says Professor Madhu Bhalla of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, who has studied the Chinese diaspora for the last two decades.

The best example of such bloody mindedness was displayed when the Indian Diaspora was attacked in Uganda by the dictator Idi Amin. 8216;8216;The Indian government did pretty much nothing,8217;8217; says Madhubala. Ditto in Fiji, where Indians have been murdered and raped in bloody riots and the Indian government has remained a mute spectator, as has been argued by deposed Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhury. In contrast, China raised a stink when Chinese were attacked in riots in Indonesia whether in 1998 after the economic collapse, or in the 1960s. The simple explanation, claims Madhubala is that: 8216;8216;Whereas Chinese settled anywhere in the world are Chinese, Indians settled abroad are viewed suspiciously, either as NRIs or PIOs,8217;8217;

For India, NRIs have always been another pool for selective glorification 8212; when one sells off a million-dollar tech start-up or when another lands a Nobel in literature or economics 8212; and a lucrative market for selling cut-to-size Bollywood reels. That the overseas community is an invaluable network of trust and reciprocity that could augment the mainland in its onward march have not yet dawned on us.

In contrast, the entrepreneurs who pioneered export-led industrialisation in all the East Asian countries except Korea were ethnic Chinese with family links and linguistic affinities to the mainland. So China was the natural destination for expats seeking cheap labour locations to relocate their light, export-oriented manufactures. Similarly, as the Chinese establishment veers almost officially to a free trade economy, its next bargain chip is the Hong Kong factor. An international financial hub, next only to London and New York, HK will easily make up for the decades that it lost in tapping the global free markets.

This tale of two experiences brings to light an underlying cultural factor. Apart from the 8216;8216;bloody-minded8217;8217; attitude, India has created a feeling among the NRIs that the motherland is interested only in their money. A feeling that was prevalent during the Kuwait war of the 1990s, when a huge number of NRIs were left stranded in the war zone, till then pampered by one and all.

On the other hand, as Bhalla points out, China considers itself as a civilisational entity, with not much of a Pan-Chinese ambition. This civilisational factor 8212; existing among Indians too but one that often gets lost in the myriad sub-nationalisms 8212; has created a true sense of belonging among the Chinese. A reason why even those Chinese who doesn8217;t want to return and live in a quasi-police state are too willing to invest in their native townships. The root, as they say, always seeks water.